


Bloodsucker

by pqlaertes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-29
Updated: 2012-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pqlaertes/pseuds/pqlaertes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles must rely on his wits to defeat a Sunnydale horror that thrives on blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloodsucker

The gleaming mosquito blundered into Giles' hair, paced unhurriedly, almost unnoticed, along his skin and then bit him, a savage plunge and drag high on his cheekbone. Giles had been beginning to drift off -- by then he'd already spent hours trying to squirm out of the ropes around his wrists and ankles, had given up on finding a position that didn't drive most of the bent springs of the bedframe into his back -- but jerked up then with a strangled groan of irritation. They must thrive there, down in the damp and the heat -- it was hellish hot, underground -- and the dark. Somewhere down the tunnel outside, a swollen hum of engines stopped, choked, came up again, lower.

The room they'd put him in was small, square at one end, fallen in at the other in a tumble of rocks, dirt, roots, pipes, and not so much as one stick of wood, even if he could have got his hands free to take it. Probably once part of a small stone building, before the earthquake swallowed it. The doorway was original, but the door, a battered metal slab that let in a little light from outside around its edges, was mis-hung, shoved into place with brutal strength rather than skill; the vampires had done that part themselves, obviously, probably replacing an old wooden door. The bedframe, metal also, once painted grey, was spotted with lesions of rust. Giles forbade himself to speculate on whether they had used it for anyone else, or brought it here especially for him.

They'd torn his clothes taking him, and Drusilla, giggling in crazed delight, had sat on him in the van on the way here and shredded away what was left of his shirt and his jacket like a three-year-old tearing up tissue paper. Even shirtless, he was drenchingly sweaty, filthy from being fought to the ground by three large vampires in a grocery store parking lot at four in the morning, filthy with rust and dirty steaming underground air. And now his cheek stung, itched, and would probably swell.

Giles shook his head, dismissing his mounting frustration, and tried to sleep again -- if he couldn't escape now, he'd at least be rested for a fight later -- but the mosquito buzzed past his ear, with a metallic, high-pitched whine worthy of Principal Snyder. Who was doubtless at this very moment -- by Giles' excellent time sense it was about nine in the morning now -- arranging some inane punishment for Buffy and the others that would keep them from even realizing he was in need of rescue, much less coming to get him. Giles twitched his head away, wishing, for the first time in many years, for the longer hair of his youth. That had always been good for shooing biting insects, especially when you had both hands on the guitar. The mosquito flew in to land at his eyebrow, where he could see it's plump body and needle legs in distasteful detail. He shook his head hard to get rid of it.

Now, that had decidedly been a mistake. The dull cloud of headache that sat permanently behind his eyebrows began to plump up in anticipation. Well, at least he was mostly in the dark here; the dark was always better for the migranes.

Where was the thing now? It must have landed; he couldn't hear it. Or perhaps it had flown out of the room, up into Sunnydale, where Buffy and her Slayerettes were. And perhaps by now Buffy had wandered into the library, called for him, noticed that he hadn't been in at all today. She'd find a way to go to his flat then, Snyder or no; but she wouldn't find much to go on there. She might find his groceries sitting in his car at the all-night grocery, the chicken rotting with the squash under bright California light. It didn't matter; between Buffy's Slayer intuition and Willow's skills with the computer, they'd find him, wherever he was.

The mosquito's next stinging bite was on the bared skin just below his collarbone. Giles shouted and the swell of headache gathered itself between his eyes, cheerfully menacing. The mosquito sat on his flesh, unconcerned.

Giles gritted his teeth, tried to squash it with his chin, but it moved off, buzzing dementedly as it circled over his chest and then landed in his chest hair. He grimaced.

They opened the door, then, and the air moved for just a moment, cool and sweet on his skin. He craned his neck up to see his visitors: Drusilla, looking like the desecration of a child burial, and two male vampires showing their demon faces, both of them staying close enough to her to signal to each other their possessiveness. She ignored them, and bent close over Giles. He recognized his own tie knotted around her left thigh, tourniquet-tight.

"The little mice were chewing on her toes, you know." Drusilla cooed into his face. Her breath had the over-bright, red smell of freshly butchered meat. "The little mice. But I brought her here. You know the words to let him out of her, Teacher. Don't you, don't you don't you?"

The male vampire on his right held something up for him to see when she beckoned. So she did have it, stolen from a museum in Naples a week before: the Venus Kallitremia, a thick, rounded alabaster statuette that was supposed to have been used for various unmentionable purposes in the lupinari at Pompeii. It was also supposed to contain a demon, bound in it by a first-century Watcher named Africanus. And he did indeed know the words that would free that demon.

"The, the only words I know about mice, Drusilla, are about three, ah, blind ones." The creature was mad, after all. He might be able to distract her with nursery rhymes until Buffy arrived.

Drusilla smiled, delirium clouding softly over her eyes. "She cut off their tails, now wasn't that cru-uell?" Her bone-white fingers cupped around his jaw, and he heard the mosquito, unsettled, whine away past his ear. "I did it to a squirrel once, Teacher. With a knife. Pretty Teacher." She kissed his mouth. He heard the other vampires growling in menace and felt the swell of one cold breast squeezed against his bared chest as she pressed him down onto the springs. The mosquito crawled slowly down the inside of his left arm, and then bit him.

Giles shut his eyes and pretended to be elsewhere. The library, yes, late at night. Willow staring into the mysteries of a laptop, or sleeping with her hair draped over the keyboard while Oz watched her worshipfully. Xander and Cordelia sprawled over the couch in the reading pit, all youth and bonelessness. Buffy lounging on the stairs, reading a magazine, while tossing a stake up so that it spins in the air, and catching it without looking. After a moment, she turns to smile at him, and . . .

Drusilla dragged her nails down his chest, just hard enough to leave welts. "Teacher." She scratched again, harder, then pulled away from him. "Give me the words, all pretty, Teacher. I'll put you somewhere nice if you tell me. A place with nice fat honeybees." She raised her fingers.

She would mesmerize him and then, he knew, he would tell her anything. She'd proved already that she could get through his every defense. The mosquito traced the curves of his ear, now, like the feathery touch of an obscene finger, flew up with a brief frenzied buzz, and then lighted on his earlobe again, began to walk towards his mouth. It hopped a rivulet of sweat, moved back, forward again, with a touch so light and hateful he shuddered. Drusilla filled his vision, her eyes like pools of poison.

"Teach me, Teacher, tell me true," Drusilla sang, "tell me, tell me tru-ue."

With an effort, headache a tempest across his brow now, he squeezed his eyes shut. "To, to raise the demon, Drusilla, you nauseating tart, you have to, ah, use the magic words: _Impele lente. Pilosa co fututui_."

He opened his eyes in slits and saw rage on her face, the demon in her features. "D'you hear me, you, you, you daft bitch? Plow yourself." The mosquito wiggled its legs obscenely against his lower lip.

" _Filthy_ Teacher!" Drusilla shrieked, and slapped him, hard enough to rock his head sideways and wrench his neck painfully. When she lifted her hand away, she looked into her palm, and tilted her head in puzzlement at the little splatter of black and blood there. Then dreamily, smiling, she licked it away.

Giles smiled back up at her, panting. "Thank you, Drusilla."

She came down on him.

  
  


Giles didn't look good. This time, Buffy decided, she was really going to make him stay in bed, and she and Willow would take turns bringing him orange juice. And she wouldn't give him his glasses back until he'd slept at least twelve hours.

And then, sometime soon, she'd go on a Crazy Bitch Hunt, and nail Drusilla to the floor with ten or eleven stakes.

Willow was looking at the liberated statuette with a suspicious frown. Xander took it out of her hands and she blushed for no apparent reason.

"Ah," Xander declared in a booming, silly voice, "yet another trinket for the trophy room in the Hall of Justice. The Forces of Good are triumphant once more."

" _Shh_ , Xander." Buffy hissed. "Giles needs to rest."

Giles opened his right eye. The left one was swollen shut. He smiled just slightly, and, even now, dimples bloomed all over his face. "That's, that's alright," he breathed, "I-I-I'm feeling quite, ah, triumphant myself."

Poor old guy was delirious. Buffy patted his shoulder and smiled at him until he closed his eye and slipped back into sleep.

 

=1999=


End file.
